Recent trends in automotive interior design focus on improving interior spaciousness. This is particularly evident in small cars where sales volumes continue to increase. A key component to improving interior spaciousness is the instrument panel. Automotive designers note that even minimal decreases in the longitudinal and vertical dimensions of the instrument panel can have a significant impact on both real and perceived foot room, legroom, visibility and overall spaciousness of the vehicle's interior. Accordingly, auto designers continue to seek ways to expand interior space of vehicles of all types.
One limiting aspect as to how much more automotive designers can expand the interior of the vehicle is the array of safety systems present in the modern automobile. The placement of the airbag module presents a particular challenge to designers. This is so because the direction of travel of the deploying airbag in an impact event must be free of obstruction under all circumstances.
There is little that can be done to reduce the physical size of the airbag module given the necessary inclusion of the folded nylon airbag, a tether (often but not always present), the inflator (including the igniter), and the housing canister itself. Accordingly, in an effort to increase the interior space of the vehicle, automotive designers attempt to relocate the module in the vehicle beyond traditional placements.
However, the availability of alternative locations for airbags is limited. For example, traditional locations for the frontal passenger airbag occupy sizeable portions of the front-middle and front-upper regions of the instrument panel.
One relocation proposal for the frontal passenger airbag that has significant opportunity to increase interior spaciousness is to relocate the frontal passenger airbag to a location relatively far forward on the instrument panel surface. This location would be very close to the intersection of the windscreen and the instrument panel. However, this location presents a variety of significant technical challenges.
One challenge is to pedestrian protection. Moving the frontal passenger airbag to a forward position close to the windscreen results in the module potentially being in the crush space ordinarily provided for passenger protection. This space provided near the windscreen is normally designed to be crushable to improve pedestrian protection However, the airbag module, being formed from a relatively rigid material, could be a danger to the impacted pedestrian by compromising the operation of the crush area typically formed between the leading edge of the windscreen and the trailing edge of the vehicle's engine hood.
As in so many areas of vehicle technology, there is always room for improvement related to steps that can be taken in the increase of vehicle interior space.